


The Diarist

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Erotica, Post War, Post-War, Romance, The Quidditch Pitch: Eternity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-07
Updated: 2007-11-07
Packaged: 2018-10-27 18:43:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10814583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: Ron Weasley exposes a woman who, unexpectedly, uncovers him too.





	The Diarist

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
> _*Warning: major character death. Not suitable for young readers.*_

I’ve been keeping a diary for more than five years now. I bought a new one five days after Ron Weasley crashed into my life.

I was looking for loneliness on a train. I was on my way to a study trip that would help me forget that my boyfriend had taken off with my best friend. Destiny sent me a tall and handsome red-haired man with piercing blue eyes. He asked me if he could sit in my compartment, since the train was full. I didn’t bother to lift my eyes from my textbooks. I said yes. A thousand kilometres and a couple of pints later, we were friends. 

Ron Weasley was lonely, but he didn’t want to be lonely alone. He decided we would be lonely together. 

I’d been keeping a diary mainly for the future. Intuition has its way with me. It keeps engulfing me in waves of certainty I can’t tame. I always believed my diary would be useful one day. 

But this diary is heavy. This diary is a burden. This is why I also had this fleeting feeling that its faith resided in fire. Strangely, I felt complacent about burning my words, although I believe it would be a loss. 

All those written words, lost to nothingness. 

All those words of passion, of lust, of hunger gone into thin smoke. 

This had to happen so my words would not come alive. I would have to watch the fire eat the paper. I would have to witness it swallow a bit of my soul. 

Ron had told me about _Horcruxes_ and how they worked. He told me he had helped to destroy some. He had failed with one. 

I tried to understand all this when he told me about them, one evening when we were too drunk for our own good. This was the night he revealed to me he was a wizard, and I almost snorted ale up my nostrils. I asked him to show me his wand, thinking he would reward me with his lopsided grin and a salacious joke. 

He didn’t smile. He reached for a wooden stick. I sobered up immediately. He rearranged my furniture in a mere swishing move. I was petrified. 

But then, Ron spoke of being a wizard. He talked about his family and friends. Some of them were long gone now. He spoke of a certain Harry Potter, one of his friends he still sees, but one he did not want me to meet. 

“Why?” I was fascinated by Harry Potter’s tragic story. 

Ron mumbled something about him being shattered. 

Tears flooded his eyes when he spoke reluctantly about a young woman he had madly loved and who had died in his arms because of this last Horcrux he could not figure out. 

I was not sure if the ale had gone to my head, or if he was truly forming those unbelievable, loving, painful, aching, passionate, gut wrenching words. Ron was a dam that had been broken. 

I believed him even though I knew I couldn’t imagine a tenth of what he was describing to me. I saw him that night like he had never bothered to show himself to me before. There had always been something about Ron I couldn’t pinpoint, something old, something belonging to another era. That night, I understood that he had been raised in another world. 

It was also that night he stumbled into my bed for the first time. 

Ron Weasley and I had been gravitating towards one another for more than five years now. In times of loneliness, we would pull ourselves closer to combust against one another for one night. 

We would forget all of our common history. We would forget where we came from, and we would be like strangers to one another. 

Stroking. Roaming. Burning. Moaning. Pulsing. Releasing. 

The sun couldn’t shine for me on those early mornings when Ron kissed me on the forehead before he stepped out the door. 

Because the sun had been lying in my bed all night. 

We would also keep forgetting that on the morning after, he never failed to shake his head. _“_ What have we done _?”_ he’d say. 

He would rake his thick red hair with his hands. He would sit on the edge of my bed, his freckled skin exhaling our combined scents, still soft from the friction of my body against his. 

I would be lying back on the bed and watch his muscled back and the strong but almost feminine curve that led to his arse. My fingers would draw light circles around my navel. 

I would say that we fell into this pattern again. He would then ask me if I regretted what happened. I would say no, but I would imply that he did. We would fight about it. We would burn ourselves with old pains, with old losses, and then we would push the other away as far as we could. 

But we could never manage to break the bond. We could never let the other one go. Our friendship was always stronger. 

Yesterday was different. 

He was chatting about his work. My cat Splinter was purring on his knees, but I saw his eyes being attracted by the heaviness of my diary. He tried to peek in this leather-bound book in which I write in red ink. When I pulled it away from his wandering eyes, Ron asked me with a wink if this was my “scarlet woman” diary. 

He had no idea how close he was to the truth. 

I couldn’t answer him. I dropped the book under the table, and I sipped on my wine, waiting for more confessions from him. I knew he wondered what this book was about. I know him so well. His smile gave away his curiosity. He was wondering about what I have been plotting. 

I know how he sees me. For him, I’m a Muggle, a non-magical woman…just a fascinating idea to him. 

I am his friend, I’m sometimes his lover, but I’m _his_ confidante. He’s not mine. I like to believe he has no idea how much lust and love for him is hidden in my glances, my nods and my smiles. When we share those brief but intense physical encounters, I steal those moments for my life, my real life. 

I never let Ron go below the surface. I’ve been closing doors for years. I’ve been hiding secrets that I secretly wish he would be keen to discover. I believe he doesn’t notice the subtle signals. 

I caught my reflection in a mirror once as we were talking, and I felt almost ashamed about my eyes going liquid when he speaks, my head shooting back oh so slightly when he makes me laugh, my fingers brushing on my collarbone when he teases me. 

However, I have hints that he can see somewhat through me: even though I’m smart, I’m bright, I’m strong, it’s my vulnerable moments, my passion, my desire, my sensuality that reveal me to him most. I know he gets me somehow. When he comes to me to quench his need for comfort by fucking me, he hugs me afterwards, as if he sensed I need strength in comforting him. 

Those fleeting images of Ron come to me in the damnest moments. I might be in the library doing research, and I might feel myself flushing when illustrations made me think of his tongue on my breasts. I might be walking home, and I might be overcome by the memory of the lustful expression he has when I suck on his fingers while he’s inside me. I might be talking to him, and I might remember in a flash how his eyes harden when he is so close to climax. 

We would keep apart from one another for weeks, until he would come stir those memories again by pining me to my bed because the last girl he was with was “not for him”. 

I feel mean for wishing it: whenever he meets a new woman, I wish for Ron to get ditched again. I wish he would come back to me for comfort. I wish for him to knock on my door again, slightly reeking from this whiskey he enjoys when he is lovelorn, to ask me if he could stay the night. 

As we were chatting cosily and drinking wine, I left him for a second to fetch something to nibble on, and when I got back with crisps and olives, my diary has taken the place of Splinter on his lap. He was biting his lower lip. 

I felt violated as he turned the pages, and he looked pained and afraid. The pages, scribbled with red words, were chasing one after the other before his eyes. He was absorbing the words, engorging himself with my handwriting. 

His voice was so low and husky: it was almost a whisper but he made my words become alive and vibrant.

_I have often thought about what was more attractive to you. My nudity, my light, my truth or the slight tainted varnish that covers it._

He was reading _my_ words in my flat, and I was shivering uncontrollably. What if those words imprinted themselves into the walls? What if those words haunted me? Would I have to flee? 

He swallowed, and he gestured towards the book. “What is this? You wrote this? Who’s the bloke? Why didn’t you tell me you had someone in your life?” 

Again, he lowered his eyes on the page, and he mouthed words, _my_ words. 

Red words, aching words slipping from his lips to tie me in. 

_I trusted you with my body so many times before. How come I can’t trust you with my true self?_

“Ron, please stop,” I pleaded, as I brought my hands to my face. 

Said aloud, my words are blasphemy to our years of friendship. He lifted his hand to silence me. The sound of his voice filled again my sitting room. 

_I am a woman, but not a witch. I was not gifted with beauty and grace like those women you seem to attract. But you can travel on me with your hands, from one curve to the other. You know this land. You have visited it so many times before, but you never stayed. You are a wanderer and my body wants an owner. I am hiding behind screens of smoke that I skillfully erect in front of you. My beauty is textured and velvety and edgy. But you will never know because I am a thousand and one women, for a thousand and one nights. You capture me only here and there._

“You’re writing to me.” Ron was accusing me. 

I lowered my head and looked at him through my fingers. I was watching Ron read as the diary spilled out all my secrets. He rubbed his lips with the tip of his fingers, and I felt less and less myself, as my hands quivered and my breath shortened. 

The diary absorbed him; the book was holding him hostage. If I were not feeling so naked, I would scream, I would be angry with him. But his eyes were exposing me through that book. Said by him, my words were so charged that I needed to lean against the wall. 

  
_What would you say if I did not hold myself back in your arms? You would be so afraid. You would not know what to do with me. You would not know how to deal with me._

The timing was off, but I needed to speak. I needed to say it. “I’ve never seen you pay so much attention to a book before.” 

My voice was flat. He closed the book soundly, and he dropped it on the table. He looked overwhelmed. 

_That was it_. I was bringing myself to the worst. That was our last bond. I had broken it tonight. Our hands will let the other go. 

Ron does not tolerate needy. Since this girl he loved had died ten years ago, Ron is holding hands from a distance. 

He shook his head. “You have it all wrong. I don’t care about this bloody book. It’s you I’m seeing here. Why didn’t you tell me about this? ” 

I felt again the pull he exerts on me, that invisible silky rope that always brings my pelvis closer to his. 

He rose from the settee. “Take a seat. I need something stronger to drink.” 

I plopped myself down, and I felt numb. My eyes wandered around, as if I was a stranger in my own house. Pieces of my life decorate this room. Ron is often there, all smiles and shine, his arm around my shoulders, clinking a cup with me, brandishing a fist to the sky with mirth this summer when we visited Scotland. 

He was back with a bottle of vodka and two glasses. He reached for the book again and dropped it on my lap. As I tried to read his features, he sat in front of me and gnawed on his nails. “Read it to me.” 

My face burned under his hard gaze, and I studied him intently. He looked tense, powerful. He’d never looked so much like a wizard to me. 

“This is my diary, Ron. I’m not reading it to you.” 

“This is obviously a diary you wrote about _me_. Read it to me.” 

I thumbed through the book. My throat was parched. Sense commended me to tell him to leave. But I obeyed. I found in myself the courage to read. 

_If you are holding this diary in your hands, it is because I’ve trusted you with it. You hold in your hands this part of me that I don’t show to friends -- and that is who you want me to be for you now. I warn you: this diary is shadowy, it is damp, and it is loaded with unspoken moans. It is all I have for you._

My voice faltered.“Read,” he urged me again. 

His palms were rubbing his knees through his trousers. And I obeyed to him. I read syllables. 

_You never asked about my perfume. You never wondered how it is almost obscene for a bookworm like me._

Words.

_In my wildest dreams, you are holding your arms to me. You are. I’m the one taking from you. In my wildest dreams, you would never let me go, and I would not shatter in thousand pieces when you leave._

Sentences. 

_I think I am worthy of you. I think you have enough fire to melt the thick ice coating that keeps me from saying all this to you._

Pages. 

Ron listened to every word that I sighed, whispered, reclaimed. I jolted when he slipped to his knees. “Don’t bother, just read.” 

His fingers wandered from my ankle to my knee. And I obeyed. 

“Please read,” he sighed in my ear when my legs spread open under the gentle pressure of his hands. He found his way up under my shirt, under my skirt. 

So I obliged. My voice shook a bit when he kissed my neck and his fingers pulled my knickers down. His hands lingered on the back of my thighs and as he rolled up my skirt upward, his flamboyant hair brushed against the inside of my upper thigh. I couldn’t master the tremors in my voice when his mouth kissed, teased, bit softly the skin of my inner thigh. 

“Read,” he hushed, as he pulled my hips closer to him. I sank lower on the settee. 

And I caved in. I read. Just for a few seconds this time. The diary slipped from my fingers, and my voice died. 

He didn’t prompt me again to read, because he was doing it himself with his tongue. 

As I was offering myself to his warm and demanding mouth, I released a long-held sigh, not unlike the one that exhales from a rare book that has been found by the sole reader who can appreciate its worth. 

\+ + + + 

“You don’t need it anymore.” 

He traces circles on my back. Splinter is licking my heel. I’m lying on my stomach, my face half hidden by my hair. His long body is pressed along mine. A ray of sun is peeking through the blinds. We are naked, in all of the rawness of the morning after. 

But this time, Ron is not sitting at the end of the bed, his shoulders hunched, his face inscrutable. His warmth has spread to me, his chest heaves softly against my arm. 

I’m mellow. Time is lost on me. A new memory is going to follow me now. 

It was only a few seconds, an eternity: it was more tangible than anything I’ve ever experienced. 

I shrank into a pulsating dot that Bing Banged a second later. 

And his mouth against my ear. His voice. Raspy, emotional. “You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re happy.” 

I’m so bewildered that I forget. “What?” 

“Your diary. You don’t need to write it anymore.” 

I roll on my side, and he engulfs me in his arms. 

“Maybe you’re right.” I kiss his scruffy chin. 

His eyelids twitch, and one small tear leaks from his left eye. 

“What is it with me and women who like books?” His mouth is oddly twisted. 

“Women who read are dangerous,” I suggest, my lips against the tender skin of his neck. 

He lets out a strangled chuckle. “But women who write are dangerous too,” he whispers, his eyes closed. “They make it real, they make it true. They get under your skin. They make you forget.” 

Under my hand, Ron’s heart is pounding strongly. Suddenly, I can feel the struggle that rises within him. 

I prop myself on one elbow, and I make him look me in the eye. Without leaving him the chance to look elsewhere, I touch his cheek. “A woman who writes knows that the previous chapters don’t disappear. They’re still there, and that’s fine. They’re part of the story.” 

His eyes tear up, but he pulls me closer. He asks me with a broken voice if he can fill and own me again. I say please do. 

As he rolls onto me, and I wrap my arms around his neck, he leans his head towards mine, and we do something new. 

Instead of clashing with each other, we kiss. We find a common rhythm that is not one of desperation or comfort. We find a rhythm that brings us to life. 

We smile. We laugh. 

And I’m beautiful again. 

I have to burn my diary. 

I have to burn my words; I have to abandon my lonely lust to the fire’s care. 

Because I need to pour my words, my red words, into Ron. 

 

* * *

 

Chapter End Notes:

This story about Ron still grieving for Hermione through another woman was written for my dear friend queenb23. Thanks to Attila and Nathaniel for their precious help. "Woman who read are dangerous" is a translation of the beautiful quote written by French writer Laure Adler.

 

 


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